We’re Closed

 

Resume Play: The Story of Hendrix Football

A great piece by Hendrix College, on the re-boot of Hendrix Football after a 51 year timeout.

 

 

So Long, and Thanks for All The Fish

Friday, August 29th, 2014 is my last official day at Hendrix College.

How does one recap what has been, perhaps, the most personally and professionally rewarding stretch of a career, in a few short words?

Poorly, if this blog post is to be one’s guide.

I have had the distinct honor and privilege of serving an academic community that is supportive, yet commands excellence. I have been blessed with colleagues and coworkers who have made me a better person, a better employee, and a better leader. I have learned new talents, and have rediscovered talents long forgotten.

And, even after they got to really know me, they still accepted me – and kept me around. What more can one ask in a position?

I hope to be able to announce what comes next in a future post.

Parenthetically, my wife hopes that this will be the not-so-distant future.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Frosh Move In Statistics

At Hendrix College, on new student move in day, we have a number of stations in our Student Life and Technology Center setup for getting ID cards made, getting your post office box, and for configuring student devices to the Hendrix network. 

And seemingly every year, I find myself banging my head against a desk, because I forgot to create a survey instrument to capture the devices that we were helping new students configure as they come to campus.

But not this year. This year, I remembered, and created a simple Frosher Move In Survey.

The instrument is pretty simple. Each survey page represents a single student, and each block on the page a device. We wanted to capture important pieces of data, without impeding overall flow of handling all of our new students before they had to be at new student convocation in the afternoon. So, the survey had to be concise, simple, and straightforward.

The instruments were completed by our student workers, who assisted new students as they configured their devices. We had gone over the process of filling out the surveys the week before in a “boot camp” that we conduct each semester.

How good was the data that we ultimately collected? Well, I’d say, OK.

The instrument did extremely well at capturing device type and OS, less well at capturing OS version, and just plain poorly at capturing data plan. I attribute the failings on the instrument mostly to the need to better train our student workers to ask for (and understand) data and text plans. But in fairness, maybe we should just drop those two questions off in the future. At any rate, those two data points ultimately proved to be unusable for anything useful, owing to the spotty collection of the data.

Below, I present the data we were able to collect, with some caveats.

First, this data does not represent all devices students use on campus, only those devices that we helped them configure. Anecdotally, we answered several questions regarding “smart TVs” and gaming devices. We had previously sent students directions on setting up devices themselves onto our wireless network, and so many had already done that. And, for those students who simply had a desktop PC, they just plugged the thing in the wall and were good to go. We know also that there is a broad mix of Apple TVs, Rokus, and gaming devices going into student dorms, because we watched them go in as they were being carted from their cars.

Our data represents devices we directly assisted with during the check-in process in the Student Life and Technology Center. In total, we helped about 1/3 of the incoming class with their devices (our HelpDesk would probably agree that we have since helped the other 2/3 with their devices, looking at our logs!).

In short, our data should not be used to say what precisely new students are using on our campus, but can certainly be used to indicate preferences and trends. In order to truly understand exactly say what is hitting our entire network, we’ll need to look back after the first week, to get an accurate device census. 

In the future, we’ll refine the instrument, and perhaps have the students self-report a second instrument, to see how they compare. But that, as they say, is a different task for a different day.

With the preamble out of the way, here is what we saw.

I think the word that comes to mind when looking at the All Devices data below is “mobility.” Phones predominate, followed by laptops, tablets, and everything else (with PCs being the small minority). Again, remember that PCs usually are just plugged into the wall, and may be underrepresented – but I think the trend is clear.

To me, the one really surprising device that I didn’t see at move in was a Chromebook. I would have at least expected to see one out the hundreds of devices we configured, given the emphasis Google has placed on K-12 education. When I go to the local middle and high schools in the area, I see them everywhere. Maybe we’ll see a few “in the wild” when we poll actual network traffic this week.

And a passing note – we didn’t see any wearables come through our line. Not surprising in some cases – with Google Glass being a $1,500 device. Still, next year I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see this category of devices amply represented.

The Computers data was the most significant to me. Anecdotally, when I first arrived at Hendrix in 2011, we configured maybe 1 Mac in every 3 computers that we assisted on new student move in day. Now, MacBooks predominate over all other laptops, and over PC laptops and desktops combined. Again, this data underrepresents desktops already setup in the dorms. But the likelihood of our students having both a desktop and a laptop is low. Given the high numbers of iOS phones and tablets our new students have, and from our raw survey data, I believe this aptly represents the tight coupling of the Apple device ecosystem; if they have an Apple computer, they most likely have an Apple Phone and / or a tablet. The converse absolutely can’t be said of owning a Microsoft PC, and being predisposed to owning Microsoft phones or tablets.

The Tablets data was surprising to me, only in that Microsoft tablets (Surface) had a slight edge over Android tablets. Just from my personal walking around on campus, I had not seen a student carrying a Surface (though several of our staff own and use them).

The Phones data is surprising, because it is counter to the larger phone market (where Android predominates). Does this mean that Apple device owners simply need more help, and Android users are more self-reliant? Does it say something about our student demographic? One should be careful projecting too much, but it is an interesting finding.

And finally, I present Devices per Student. This will seem very low to those of you working on college campuses, and you will be right. Remember, this data is just for devices we helped configure in our move in process, and does not account for devices setup by students themselves or already plugged into the wall in their dorms.

I hope this data is of interest to you, gentle reader, and would welcome your comments, concerns, and suggestions on how we might do a better job next year.

Associated Colleges of the South CIO Hangout – BYOD

A panel of technologists and CIOs from the Associated Colleges of the South, discussing Technology, Tools, and Tactics.

David J. Hinson, EVP & CIO of Hendrix College, and Todd Watson, Senior Director of Information Technology at Southwestern University, discuss the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) phenomena on campus, and what impact it is having on College and University infrastructures.

Associated Colleges of the South CIO Hangout – Professional Development

In this Hangout, we discuss staff development programs, reviews, preventative / intervention tactics, and how consortia can aid in our staff development efforts. Joining in is Pat Schoknecht, CIO of Rollins College.

ACS CIO Hangout – Episode 7: Cloud Services

A panel of technologists and CIOs from the Associated Colleges of the South, discussing Technology, Tools, and Tactics.

Fred Zapata from Trinity, Fred Miller from Furman, Pamela McQuesten from Southwestern, and David Hinson from Hendrix discuss Cloud Services – what they are, how they are being used, and what they mean for the future prospects of campus information technology services.

Testing Audioboo.fm service, which is similar to the SoundCloud.com audio service.

This is a 10 minute excerpt, from the Full Podcast found here.

The Five “P”s of Being a Successful CIO

Great CIOs share many characteristics. These Five “P”s are common to all successful CIOs.

Mark “Live Through a Hurricane” Off My Bucket List

Ten years ago, I was able to mark several items off of my “bucket list.”

One of those items was living through a Category 3 Hurricane.

My family and I were living in Celebration, FL at the time. My niece had just finished spending the Summer with us, and we had returned from a blisteringly hot week in the Florida Keys, wringing the last bit of vacation out of our systems.

After we had returned to Celebration, we had originally planned for my wife, my son, and my niece to return to Nashville on Friday the 13th. Watching the weather, we were concerned that, should the threatening Hurricane Charley turn right, they might not be able to leave Orlando. We opted instead for them to fly out on the 12th. I was working on a software project for a client, and so I remained at home.

On the 12th, It was by no means certain that the storm was going to pass across Central Florida. I wasn’t particularly worried. Anxious, maybe even a little excited. But not worried. Our utilities in Celebration were all underground, and we were on the Disney power grid. I wasn’t concerned about being without power.

Early on the 13th, Charley took a decidedly sharp turn right at Punta Gorda, and had blown up to a Cat 4 hurricane with amazing speed. I spent the morning, walking around our neighborhood, noting the quiet stillness. The theme parks remained open right up until 1 PM. There was an air of electric anticipation.

Early evening, the storm hit.

I was sitting in my kitchen, working, when all hell broke loose. It’s impossible to describe the intensity of daily Florida thunderstorms to someone who hasn’t experienced one; it’s equally fruitless to describe what being inside a major hurricane is like. The wind, water, and noise comes at you from every direction at once. The amount of water coming down is unbelievable.

You sit there thinking, “I am a jackass for being here.”

Charley was intense. And fast.

Unlike many hurricanes, it was so fast moving, that there wasn’t much of a “backside” to the storm. In just a handful of hours, it was past Central Florida and out over the Atlantic.

The devastation the next morning was unbelievable. Every tree was down in the neighborhood. The houses and townhomes in Celebration survived largely intact. The surrounding area homes weren’t as fortunate. Blue rooftop tarps would be a familiar sight for many months to come. For many of our friends in Orlando, it would be weeks before power was restored.

What Charley blew down, Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne blew away in the weeks that followed. In all, three Category Three Hurricanes passed over our home in a month’s time.

Needless to say, Friday the 13th, 2004 is a day we will long remember.

While 2004 was an extremely damaging year for Hurricanes in Florida – don’t forget what a monster Ivan was, that hit the Panhandle that same year – the next year saw so many named storms that the alphabet was lapped. Murphy, my youngest son, was born in New Port Richey in July of 2005, as Hurricane Dennis threatened – already in the “D”s the first week of July, an early indicator of just how busy the season was to become.

In the coming days, I hope to jog down more remembrances of those weeks of waiting for the wind and water to pass… of going to Disney in a downpour, because I was tired of sitting in my den for four days… of driving to Daytona, looking for ice… of our satellite dish being hit by lighting, just as Hurricane Jeanne was coming to shore… of being in awe at how powerful nature can be.

Of feeling guilty that we came through relatively untouched, aside from a few trees, while many friends and neighbors lost everything.

 

 

They’re More Like “Guidelines” Than Actual Rules

If you’ve ever worked in Higher Ed, you’re used to working within a complex maze of rules, procedures, and committees.

At Hendrix College, when we were contemplating how we might put together some “helps” for our people as they navigate the wilds of Social Media, the very last thing we wanted to do was to impose yet another layer of opaque policies atop an already dizzying array of existing policies governing personal behaviour exhibited while representing the institution publicly.

Instead, we have attempted to provide some simple, pragmatic guidelines for effectively engaging on social media channels – transparently, accurately, and with respect for the communities in which we converse.

Did we succeed? Let us know.